The Absolution Read online

  The Abu Omar story had been picked over by the world’s press until there was nothing left, but it seemed to Holly that a twenty-year CIA staffer might well know something useful about her quarry. She contacted a journalist who’d done a recent interview with Proost, asking him to pass on her details. To avoid scaring off either party, she used her private email.

  Within hours she had Proost’s answer. I’ll talk to you for a fee of $1,000 US.

  She wired the money by PayPal.

  Thank you. I don’t like taking money for this, but it’s my only source of income. Please understand though that I can’t and won’t discuss anything relating to operational security. Would you rather do this by Skype or Carnivia?

  Skype, Holly wrote. She still found something a little disconcerting about conversing with the masked denizens of Carnivia.

  Details exchanged, she found herself looking at a dumpy middle-aged woman sitting on a suede La-Z-Boy settee. A cat was curled up next to her, on a cushion embroidered with the words “Dogs have owners, cats have staff”.

  Holly introduced herself as a writer doing research for a book about the CIA in Italy.

  Proost snorted. “Another one?”

  “This is a slightly different angle,” Holly said. “I’m writing an appreciation of one of the Section’s most senior agents – Ian Gilroy. I imagine you must have known him?”

  There was a pause. Skype lag? No: when she spoke, Proost’s voice was guarded. “Ian Gilroy. He’s still going, is he?”

  “Well, he’s retired from the CIA, of course. He has a part-time role in education at Camp Ederle.” The other woman’s face was expressionless. “I’m just after some background. What kind of guy was he, what kind of operations he ran . . .”

  “We didn’t overlap by much.”

  “I know.” Holly glanced at her notes. “By my reckoning, Gilroy would have come to Italy towards the end of the 1960s. The Section Chief then was a man called Bob Garland. From what I can gather, Garland took Gilroy under his wing.”

  Proost shook her head. “Whoever told you that got it wrong. The talk when I arrived was that Garland and Gilroy were rivals, not protégé and mentor.”

  Holly frowned. Gilroy had always given the impression that, whilst he’d been alarmed by some of his predecessor’s methods, they had been close. “So Gilroy tried to clean things up, and Bob didn’t like it?”

  “Wrong again. My understanding was that there’d been concern back at Langley about the way things were heading when Garland ran the show. There was an initiative from the Italian socialist party to share power with the communists—”

  “I know about that. The Historic Compromise,” Holly interrupted. She wanted to focus Proost on the stuff she couldn’t find in the history books. “What was Langley’s response?”

  “Well, panic, pretty much. From what people said to me later, the seventh floor decided Garland had been too soft. Gilroy was sent to sort things out.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  Proost shrugged. “I do know that there were hundreds of operations in those years. The cryptonyms went all the way from A to Z.”

  “Could those operations have included infiltrating the Gladio network?”

  A long pause. “Even if I knew that, I couldn’t discuss it with you.”

  Holly mentally parked that response for later analysis. “Let’s assume for a moment that it did. What I still don’t understand is that the gladiators were generally seen as being on the right wing of Italian politics. Yet the only public record of Ian Gilroy’s career has him involved in an operation to penetrate the left wing, the Red Brigades. Why would one agent be involved in both operations?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know any details. But I do know that after the collapse of the Historic Compromise, Gilroy was seen by Langley as the man who’d delivered the goods. That was when Bob was eased into retirement.”

  So personal ambition, and America’s strategic objectives, had somehow coincided. Gilroy had achieved what his bosses wanted, and profited as a result. But what exactly had that been? And more to the point, by what methods had it been achieved?

  “America was working for the collapse of the Historic Compromise, then,” Holly said. “And Gilroy was the man who made it happen. But why would that require the death of someone who found out about it?”

  “Death?” Proost frowned. “Whose death?”

  “Major Ted Boland, at Camp Darby. He and an Italian neighbour stumbled across evidence suggesting that part of Gladio was being run as a network of agents provocateurs—”

  “Wait a minute.” Proost stared at her. “Boland is your name.”

  “Major Boland is my dad.”

  “Oh my God,” Proost said faintly. “You’re that Boland.”

  “What Boland?” Holly said, suddenly alert. “What do you know about my father?”

  “Nothing.” Proost shook her head emphatically.

  “Did Gilroy try to have him killed to protect his operation? Was it the CIA who authorised it? If you know anything – anything at all—”

  Proost leant forward to the screen. A message appeared.

  Call ended.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DANIELE HAD SPENT many hours examining the worm he’d found in Domino9859. Because it was written in Carnivia’s site-specific programming language, any information that might have enabled him to trace its creator was encrypted. There was one part, though, that was in clear text. When he’d designed the encryption, Daniele had deliberately excluded numerals. In any code, numbers written as numerals were easy to crack, since there was no disguising that they continued to behave according to the immutable rules of mathematics. For that reason, most cryptographic systems required the sender to write out numbers as words: five, twenty-five and so on.

  Deep within the Carnivia worm was the number 10-12-1437.

  In some way, he believed, this had to be significant. The Stuxnet worm, for example, had contained the number 06-24-2012. It was part of an instruction to the virus to start deleting itself on the twenty-fourth of June, 2012.

  It seemed likely to Daniele that 10-12-1437 was also part of an instruction – in this case, for the virus to activate. But even though it wasn’t encoded, the hacker had somehow managed to disguise it.

  Unless . . .

  Daniele turned to the internet and did a little research. The one thing he knew about the hacker was that he was a radicalised Muslim.

  He soon discovered that whereas each new year in the Western calendar began on the solar anniversary of Christ’s birth, the Muslim calendar was a lunar one. In that calendar, the current year was 1437. And the current month was Dhu al-Hijjah, the twelfth month of the year. It was the most blessed and propitious time in the calendar, the time of haj. It also signalled the end of Dhu al-Qa’ada, the Month of Truce.

  If the last six digits indicated the month and year, did “10” indicate the day?

  The tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah, he discovered, was an especially significant day in the Muslim calendar, because it marked the celebration of Eid al-Adha. The words meant “The Day of Sacrifice”.

  This year, Eid fell on the eleventh of September. Or, written another way, 9/11, the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre.

  That had to be the worm’s zero-date. Exactly seven days away. And, coincidentally, just a few hours before the elections within Carnivia were due to take place.

  The Fréjus attack, Daniele was sure, had been nothing more than a trial run. But in one week’s time, any of Carnivia’s users who were infected with the worm would become a zombie army, their computers under the hacker’s control.

  He was still considering the implications when Max popped up on his screen.

  How’s it going? Max asked.

  Gnarly. You?

  I’ve been counting worms. They were pretty sure Domino9859 wasn’t the only user to be infected, but they had no way of knowing how widespread the problem was. Daniele had asked Max to take a random
sample of three hundred avatars and examine them, to see if any of those were infected too.

  And?

  In my sample of 300, I found 52 nasties.

  Daniele stared at the screen. Over seventeen per cent! It barely seemed possible. If you scaled up from Max’s sample to the number of registered users, it meant that even on a conservative estimate, around half a million Carnivians had been infected.

  How could that happen and us not know about it?

  That’s what I thought. So I did a recount.

  And?

  And by the time I’d finished, there were 58. It’s growing all the time, Daniele. In some way we haven’t yet worked out, the virus is jumping between our users’ computers.

  It must be spreading socially, inside Carnivia. Every interaction, however brief, between Carnivians involved a small exchange of code. The worm must have a tiny self-replicating payload that attached itself to an infected user’s keystrokes. Essentially, the hacker was using each Carnivian he compromised to recruit others. A part of Daniele couldn’t help but admire the neatness of it.

  This was no ordinary denial-of-service attack the hacker was planning, he realised. When you put all the parts together – the attack on Fréjus, the jihadist slogans, the sophistication of the worm, the date – there could be only one conclusion.

  This was cyberwarfare, and his website – Carnivia – was where the battle lines were being drawn.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  FLAVIO HAD BEEN working late, and Kat was making risotto alla sbirraglia, risotto with diced chicken and carrots, which had to be stirred with every ladleful of hot stock or it would not become creamy, and then they were in a hurry to get into bed and enjoy each other before it was time for the bodyguards to come back. Only after their lovemaking was over and they lay tangled in each other’s limbs, the backs of his fingers lightly stroking her shoulder, did she tell him what she’d learnt – that Count Tignelli’s goal appeared to be independence for the Veneto, and as much for personal gain as political belief.

  “Vivaldo says there must be more to it than just a referendum that’s proposed and then denied, though. That might make people in the Veneto angry, but it wouldn’t be enough to make them break with Rome. He thinks Tignelli will do something to provoke a state of emergency.” She hesitated. “Avvocato Marcello mentioned that AISI’s interest in Cassandre was linked to terrorism. Could that be the pretext – some kind of terror attack?”

  “I thought you were insisting that AISI were part of the Masonic conspiracy themselves.”

  “Yes, well maybe I was wrong about that,” she admitted. “The more we find out about Tignelli, the more it looks as if he’s trying to break away from Rome, not cosy up with them.”

  “We still don’t have any evidence of that,” he warned. “On the other hand, there probably is enough now to question Tignelli in connection with Cassandre’s murder. He had a clear motive to make that deal with the Banca Cattolica, and thus to get rid of anyone who got in the way.” He glanced at her. “It’s difficult. Not least because I have to be absolutely sure that personal feelings have played no part in my decision.”

  “I understand.” Aroused by the absent-minded touch of his hand on her arm, she reached around and started rubbing his stomach, feeling the lattice of muscles beneath the skin.

  “I’ll sleep on it,” he decided. “And let you know first thing in the morning.”

  By way of answer, she kissed his chin, working up the line of his jaw to his earlobe. She could sense him becoming aroused, and moved her hand lower. On the bedside table his phone buzzed and flashed, as if in protest. Groaning, he reached for it.

  “They’re here,” he said, looking at the screen. “Damn.”

  She didn’t need to ask who. The bodyguards were like the wife in this relationship: duty and security, calling him away from her.

  He swung his feet onto the floor. As he reached for his shirt, she stroked his back, for the simple pleasure of touching his skin for a few seconds longer.

  He said quietly, “When I said I had to be sure that personal feelings weren’t a factor . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It works two ways, you know. That is, I obviously feel a certain pressure to see things from your point of view. But I also feel the exact opposite, a need to keep our heads below the parapet. To keep you safe. If we were simply to ignore what Vivaldo Moretti told you . . . No one would ever blame us for not pursuing it.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  “We could be in Amsterdam within a couple of months.”

  She said nothing. She didn’t tell him that she wouldn’t respect him if he dropped the investigation now, because it wasn’t true. She trusted him to do the right thing, and who was to say, in a situation like this one, what that might be?

  “The point is, I mustn’t be influenced either way.” He stood up, then leant down again to kiss her goodbye. “I’ll let you know first thing.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  HOLLY’S SPIDERGRAM WAS begetting a whole family of baby spiders now.

  Something Carole Tataro had said to her in the prison interview room came back to her. She added:

  “But please don’t tell me I’m any worse than those on the other side of the political spectrum.”

  And then:

  Was he doing the same thing on the right, with Gladio? Proost refused to answer that.

  DEAD END?

  But it wasn’t a dead end, she realised; not quite. The regular internet might not have been much use, but she had access to something many times more powerful.

  She went to Camp Ederle late that night. But even after midnight, a US base is rarely quiet. The MP on the gate told her it was good to see her back, ma’am; and just walking from the parking lot to the building where her own section, Civilian Liaison, was based, she encountered several other people who recognised her.

  The main thing, though, was that her boss, Mike Breedon, wasn’t around. Her desk was much as she’d left it months before, bare and neat, apart from a pile of accumulated mail.

  She slid her Common Access Card into the card reader by her computer and booted it up. After entering a clearance code, she was able to access NIPRNet, the Department of Defense’s own intranet, and CREST, the CIA’s Records Search Tool. Because the information she was looking for was more than twenty-five years old, she was hoping it would be readily accessible.

  She typed in “Gilroy, Ian”.

  For a moment, nothing but the response

  Searching.

  Then:

  ERROR. No records relating to that term.

  Frowning, she tried SIPRNet, the NSA’s secure equivalent. Nothing there either.

  As a last resort, she logged into JWICS, the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. Where SIPRNet was cleared for material up to “Secret”, and could be accessed by up to four million trusted allies around the world, JWICS was FAEO, For American Eyes Only.

  Gilroy, Ian. 798 records. Refine your search?

  She typed “operations”. That got it down to seventy-four documents. She clicked on the first one.

  ERROR. You do not have clearance to access this material. Please contact your network administrator or chain of command.

  Going back, she typed “personnel, location, based at”.

  54 records.

  Opening the first document, she found that it was a simple note of which CIA office Gilroy had been working out of in 1974. She clicked the next one. That gave her the same information for 1979.

  A thought occurred to her. Using the regular internet, she made a timeline of all the atrocities and assassinations that had characterised the Years of Lead. Then she highlighted the locations.

  19 November 1969. Antonio Annarumma, a policeman, was assassinated during a riot by far-left demonstrators in Milan. There was immediate public revulsion, with many commentators denouncing the left.

  12 December 1969. Four separate bombs were planted in Milan and Rome, killing 16 a
nd injuring 90. The Red Brigades were initially accused of what became known as the Piazza Fontana massacre. Later, officials admitted that there was no evidence for this.

  In 1969 the young Ian Gilroy, newly arrived in Italy, had been based at the Milan Section, where – according to JWICS – he was assigned to something called Operation Amethyst. By the end of the year, however, the same records showed he’d been travelling regularly to Rome, for something called Operation Beachcomber. The dates corresponded to the period immediately preceding the Piazza Fontana bombing.

  31 May 1972. Massacre of three policemen at Peteano, north of Venice. Although the Red Brigades were accused of the killings, over a decade later a right-wing activist admitted having planted the explosives.

  By 1972 Gilroy was stationed at Venice, where he was running an operation codenamed Clockhouse. All records for Clockhouse ceased abruptly at the end of May.

  28 May 1974. Bombing at Piazza dell Loggia, Brescia, west of Venice. Killed 8 and wounded 100.

  Again, May 1974 saw a flurry of activity in the Venice Section for something called Operation Emerald.

  Gilroy had continued to be stationed at Venice during the summer of 1977, when Daniele Barbo had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades. Then, in 1978, he’d moved to Rome.

  March 16, 1978. Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Rome.

  Coincidence? Or an indication of something more sinister?

  After the end of the Cold War, and the enforced termination of the Gladio network, the Red Brigades had also fallen silent. Until, that is, almost a decade later, when they’d made a sudden resurgence. The last assassination they carried out was as recent as 2003. Shortly afterwards, Ian Gilroy retired from the CIA’s payroll.

  Again, was it a coincidence that terrorists were killing people on Italian soil just as America was calling for its allies to join a global war on terror?